Recently I tried to find a story that came to my Google Reader inbox. It was a story about a fella breaking two rods in one trip. The story was originally published by a paper in Arkansas and posted to their web site. I had to click on three links and pass through three sites just to get to the original story.
This reminded me of a conversation I had with my father-in-law a few months ago. We had a run in with a ‘work-at-home-produce-nothing salesman’. You 
I am beginning to believe that this is the case with some in the blogosphere. Now to qualify this and admit to doing this with my Twitter account. But, in my defense, I try to link to interesting and relevant stories as well I try to comment on those links as I can. I also write my own material for this blog. It seems to me that there are more and more sites out there that are dedicated to rehashing stories and links. It likely would not bother me if these sites gave a little comment on the subject or story, but what I see are sites dedicated to producing nothing and making a dime off the backs of bloggers and writers who actually produce something.
I know, I should be thankful for anyone who would point me to good stories and information. But, if you saw my news feed inbox and the number of sites that just link to the same story or that link to a link, that links to another link, you would understand my frustration.
I tell you we are becoming link pushers and not link producers.
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Photo by: striatic
8 comments:
Great and true post. I'm going to link to it.
Great stuff, Matt!
I don't think there is anything wrong with using Twitter to point stuff out to your followers - you are providing value there, even if you don't have an opinion on the link one way or another.
Also, there are a lot of aggregation sites that can be very useful for tracking your interests, but sadly they don't all provide value in excess of links. The best use I've found in them is figuring out who reps original thought/content when it is anything but. Of course, finding that kind of stuff out can also be done easily via Google - just highlight a sentence or two from a post you think you saw last week, and search for it.
great link (thank you Fishing Jones).
Although a distinct non-southerner, i enjoyed some tasty grits at The Pink Teacup on Grove St. in the village the other day.
As I don't have a blog, I will link to their 'about' page. I'm pushing NYC grits links, baby! go ahead.. click on my troutbumness!
Linking vs content creation has become a highly relevant questions, especially once you consider the rapid failure of one newspaper after another.
It's a hugely complex idea, but the part that concerns me - as someone who generates a fair amount of content - is that content generators aren't turning out to be the folks making money for their efforts - aggregators are.
The biggest example is Google, which - from one perspective - is making bazillions off the content of others, and not returning so much as a dime.
Nichola Carr (of Rough Type) has written some stunning examples of the Web 2.0 effect, which he likens to sharecropping (note the sarcasm in the last sentence):
"A little over a week ago, the Birches sold Bebo, the third largest social network, to AOL for $850 million, about $600 million of which will reportedly go into the pockets of their jeans. As for the millions of members who have happily served as sharecroppers on the Birches' plantation, they'll get the satisfaction of knowing that all the labor they donated to their "community" did indeed create something of tangible value."
The whole post is here: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/03/meanwhile_back.php
It's interesting to note that the human filter effect is in evidence even in the tiny fly fishing blogosphere, where a couple of the top blogs produce precious little content, largely aggregating the content of others.
Certainly, it attracts readers, and it's easily the best business model in terms of effort vs return, but what happens when the number of content producers on the other end of the pipeline dwindles?
It's going to be an interesting ten years, I think.
Great point, Matt. As for the value of linking, even "link spam" can escape that label and rise to the status of value-added content if done intelligently enough. There are plenty of businesses besides Google who have made it a high art form and provide a valuable service to an audience. "Aggregating content" has also taken on a sort of sinister glow, but there is a huge and growing need for the human vetting and filtering of information that algorithms can't manage. No publishing model that wasn't at its heart a content aggregator has ever worked, simply because content creators aren't usually able to generate the revenue on their own. (Magazines and newspapers are classic content aggregators, in that they typically don't acquire all rights to a creation or always demand originality.) If you think about it, a link is simply an acquisition of someone else's rights. Whether or not that link is seen as "stolen" or a business advantage to the source depends on who's doing the linking, their credibility and force in the market.
I don't see anything inherently wrong with someone starting or maintaining a blog that is just daily list of links to valuable resources. It's either valuable, or it's not. People will either read it or they won't. But in the end, if you want to generate an audience (make money), you have to do much more than link, aggregate content, or opine about whatever happens to be stuck in your craw that day. And if you don't care about making money, why worry about it at all?
Marshall said:
"No publishing model that wasn't at its heart a content aggregator has ever worked, simply because content creators aren't usually able to generate the revenue on their own. (Magazines and newspapers are classic content aggregators, in that they typically don't acquire all rights to a creation or always demand originality.)"
Certainly, aggregation of content is fine - when creators get paid for their efforts.
Under the "old" model mentioned in Marshall's comment, the content creators in question (authors, journalists, etc) got paid to create the content that's being aggregated by publishers and newspapers.
The new model seems to involve not paying creators for content, a move which - as Nicholas Carr points out - suggests the death of intellectual property.
An extreme idea to be sure, but the effects are very real; we seem to be concentrating wealth in the hands of aggregators (Google, Bebo, Facebook, etc) with creators - as Carr pointed out - filling the not-very-desirable role of sharecropper.
Human filtering is needed, but it doesn't answer the basic questions about the future - when content is free, and aggregators enjoy the spoils.
What will they aggregate?
These are some of the reasons I suggested (on my blog) the standalone original content blog may become an endangered species (as a sustainable, revenue-generating media property), and content creators who want generate some return for their efforts might look to other combinative models.
Perhaps the solution will be as simple as the creation of vertical ad networks that return more than pizza money to creators, but I'm betting we'll eventually see new online media structures that cross self-imposed content boundaries.
My point here isn't to attack fly fishing's aggregators. It's to point out that what's happening at the macro seems to be translating to the micro.
As someone who's made a living creating "content" for better than two decades, it's hard not to look at the emerging models without asking some basic questions - the answers to which haven't been very comforting.
But the journalists who wrote for periodicals didn't make their content publicly available for free, either. No one has to put their content on a publicly accessible Web page; anyone can stick their content behind an authentication system and charge for it. But most authors would prefer begin read over not being read, if only because it gives them the chance to be read even more. It's a little like selling pumpkins to the pumpkin farmer, but I doubt seriously whether there is any imminent danger to intellectual property, or any chance that great content (pumpkins) will cease to be created. Great writing rarely happens in the office.
A mathematical algorithm that determines the value of content is very limited. And standalone creative content has hardly ever resulted in just compensation for the author -- at least in their lifetime. So in the end you still have folks selecting, packaging, and selling content. An alternative that rewarded artists directly would be heaven-sent, but as long as communication technology has existed, each era has made the artist/writer/photographer/journalist less independent.
The best answer I've seen in recent months is the creation of journalist collectives that are non-profit and privately funded. They have a real chance at rescuing journalism, and if I had the money I'd start one. But if anyone thinks they don't suffer the same stratification and corporate malaise as in regular media companies, I suggest spending a little time working at a non-profit (something you might want to do anyway, but not for money).
It all comes back to Matt's father-in-law's comment. If it looks and feels like it is easy to do, it probably isn't very valuable.
Apologies, Matt, for getting far off-topic. I'll confine further comment to my lockable diary with handy red rayon bookmark.
I appreciate all the comments. And don't worry Marshall, conversations are suppose to evolve.
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